A Mighty Fortress by David Weber

asleep,” he added.
    “When I was asleep?” She gave him the sort of look nannies gave young children who insist they certainly don’t know anything about any missing cookies. No, Ma’am! Not them! “And just why did you do that, Seijin Merlin?” she inquired rather tartly. “Without mentioning it to me, I mean.”
    “Well, at the time, the Brethren still hadn’t agreed you could be told about the Journal,” Merlin said. “That meant I couldn’t explain it to you.”
    “That meant you couldn’t explain it to me then, ” she pointed out implacably. “It doesn’t say a word about why you couldn’t have explained it to me since . Nor does it answer the really important question. That would be the one about why you did it at all.”
    Merlin looked at her for a long moment, then shook his head. He’d known this moment was going to come, he reminded himself. And he didn’t really expect her to be too upset with him....
    Sure you don’t, he thought dryly. That’s why you’ve been in such a tearing rush to come clean, isn’t it, Seijin Merlin? And why the hell does Owl have to suddenlystart displaying spontaneous autonomous responses right this minute? If he’d just kept his damned mouth shut, like usual....
    “All right,” he sighed. “The reason I gave the medicomp your records—and yours, too, Cayleb,” he added to the emperor he knew was listening in from Cherayth, “was so that it could manufacture standard nanotech for both of you.”
    “ ‘Nanotech’?” Cayleb repeated over the com, pronouncing the word very carefully, and Merlin nodded.
    “Yes. Nanotechnology consists of very, very tiny machines—so tiny you couldn’t see them with the most powerful magnifying glass any Safehold optician could possibly grind. In this case, they’re medical machines, designed to work inside the human body to keep it healthy.”
    “There are machines inside us?” Sharleyan knew she sounded a bit shaken by the idea, but that was fair enough. She was shaken. And not just a little bit, if she was going to be honest about it, either.
    “Yes. But they’re so tiny no one would ever realize they were there,” Merlin assured her hastily. “And they won’t hurt you—or anyone else—in any way!”
    “Should I assume from what you’ve just said that you put these . . . machines inside both of us?” Cayleb asked, and there was a faint but undeniable sternness in the question.
    “Yes,” Merlin said again, and squared his shoulders. “You and your father were both going off to war, Cayleb, and I needed you both.” His face hardened and his voice grew harsher, harder. “I lost your father, anyway,” he grated, unable, even now, to fully forgive himself for that, “and I don’t plan on losing you, too. Certainly not to anything I can prevent! So I injected you with the standard Federation nanotech when you were asleep. And I did the same thing to Sharleyan after she arrived in Tellesberg. And”— he shrugged again—“if this is the time for coming clean, I suppose I should admit I did it for Maikel and Domynyk and . . . a few others, too.”
    “But . . . why?” Sharleyan asked.
    “Because it will keep you from getting sick.”
    “Sick from what?” Cayleb asked.
    “From anything,” Merlin said simply.
    “What?” Sharleyan blinked at him again. Surely he didn’t mean—
    “From anything,” Merlin repeated. “You’ll never have cancer, or pneumonia, or even a cold again. And if you’re injured, it will help you heal more quickly. A lot more quickly, in fact. Actually, that was one reason I hesitated to inject it. If a healer happens to notice how fast one of you recovers from a cut or a broken bone, it could lead to... questions.”
    “Wait a minute,” Cayleb said. “Just wait a minute. You mean neither of us will ever be sick again? Not ever? ”
    “Exactly.” Merlin sighed yet again. “I don’t have the anti- aging drugs to go with it, even if we dared to use them in the first